So LG is advertising the expanded panoramic and camera capabilities of its Optimus G Pro smartphone. At first blush, the commercial looks like a blatant ripoff of Apple’s iPhone 5 ad titled “Cheese”, down to the kids on the white background and the elongated “Cheeeeese”.

On closer inspection, it has a nice twist to it, watch what happens after mark 0:30. Their VR Panorama obviously out-innovates Apple in how amazingly it stitches the photos together to produce a nearly 360-degree image. Apple better come up with some expanded panorama features in iOS 7…

In LG’s ad, the imaginary photographer moves the handset along both horizontal and vertical axis, producing a nearly 360-degree image that captures the ceiling and floor. The company also highlights the awesome tracking feature allowing the handset to keep moving objects in focus.

Here’s Apple’s ad for reference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtm4ySJQPOc

Apple added the panorama capability to its latest iPhone and iPod touch devices with the September 2012 release of iOS 6.

“With one simple motion you can shoot up to 240 degrees — even vertically, to get that redwood tree, say,”Apple writes. “Then hardware and software work together to create one seamless, high-resolution panorama.”

A month later, Google followed up with the release of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean which brought out the souped up panorama feature. Dubbed Photo Sphere, it lets you move your handset around to capture multi-dimensional panorama images that can be shared on Google+ or Google Maps.

Hopefully, Apple comes up with some expanded panorama features in iOS 7.